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Thursday, May 8, 2014

Increased Weighted Grade Point Average: (for C and above grades.) Colleges and scholarships want to see a high Grade Point Average. Some college also want to see your unweighted GPA, so it is important to carefully choose your AP courses and not over-commit. AP does not affect your unweighted GPA.

Level of Difficulty: Colleges and scholarships want to see that you are attempting the most challenging courses available

By Shenandoah University (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Priority Registration: Impacted programs often register students with more credits first. This ensures you get your classes and get out of school quicker.

Increased Knowledge and Skill Base: AP courses are challenging. This increases your overall level of knowledge and skills. This decreases the burden of learning future material in high school and college. It is kind of like a genius snowball effect. You learn more, which frees you up to learn more.This is why smart kids do well in college. They are coming to the table with more knowledge and skills while others are working just to catch up. Writing skills often determine the likelihood of college graduation and AP will help to develop those skills.

When you know more you will also do better on the SAT/ACT college entrance tests. Colleges and scholarships often weight this as importantly as GPA.

College Credit for passed AP Tests: You save up to $4000 savings per passed test! According to the survey of colleges by the College Board, the average private college tuition per year is $30,094. Add in an average housing and meal cost of $10,000 and that AP test is worth $4000! Public schools, scholarships, and living at home will lower this cost and therefore the savings, but it is still significant.

Earlier graduation. The longer it takes to graduate, the more likely you will drop out of college. Each passed AP test shortens the time it takes to graduate.

Get to work sooner and make more money. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the average starting salary for a degree holder is $44,259. That is how much you can have in hand when you graduate a year early. This will also give you a year’s seniority towards future promotion, raises, and retirement.

Avoid those super-huge 100 level courses. You will have done these in high school. These are often some of the most difficult classes to get because people are having to repeat those courses. 200-400 level courses are often much smaller and more intimate.